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CSA #14: Fall Bounty

My basket arrived today, and as promised, it contained what we should start expecting as soon as the summer produce finishes up. My basket contained 3 ears of decorative corn (which I promptly hung on the outside door), a tiny pumpkin (too small to carve or eat, so it’ll decorate our table), a potted purple aster, tomatoes, a butternut squash, an acorn squash, an onion, green beans, and soybeans (edamame). Also included were some wheat berries, grown on their farm. The farmer says we’ll return to the regular summer baskets next week and stick with that until that harvest is done. Oh, and we’re supposed to get what she called a really LARGE winter squash next week as well which is supposed to be put in the freezer. Instructions included! Can’t wait!

My own tomatoes have dwindled to almost nil. I get about 5 romas a week, and a couple of smaller goldens. There are a dozen or more green tomatoes on each plant, and I’ll leave them as long as I can in hopes we’ll get an Indian Summer and they’ll ripen. My peppers are still growing, but some rain tipped a plant over last week while we were away, and I had to harvest several very small peppers just to keep them. I’m slicing and freezing them for use this winter.

Thoughts are starting to go towards next year’s garden. As much as I loved the green beans growing up the poles which made it very easy to harvest, the beans themselves were very stringy. I’ll have to research pole beans to see if any varieties aren’t so stringy. What I’d like to do is build an arbor and have the beans climb that and grow along the top. Then I could manage them better (especially if I don’t plant so many seeds). I’m not going to plant peas, and I’m going to move the herbs to the pots. That’ll give me more room for tomatoes and peppers. We had them too close together this year and the peppers have really struggled to get enough sunshine.

So we’re considering beans again, peppers, tomatoes, and herbs. Oh, and cucumbers again, this time left to crawl along the ground. I was thinking about maybe getting some chicken wire and laying it along the ground just beyond the plants and then when we need to mow, we can just lift up the wire to mow under it? I’m also going to build new tomato cages this year using much stronger wires. I’ll be buying longer stronger stakes too. We learned a lot this year!

I’d love to try potatoes too. Not sure if I have room though 🙂

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I find it very interesting to see what you receive in your CSA box compared to mine. We’re one week behind, and just received week #13 here in Wisconsin. Decorative corn and soybeans are such unique additions!

Yes, I loved this week’s “Fall Bounty” basket! I might actually do something with the soybeans too — have seen them in booth’s at the market, and in the store, but never bought any. Now that they’re at the house, I’d better figure out how to cook/serve them.

You just need to look for a “stringless” variety of beans when you buy seeds. My “heirloom” beans were also stringy — the positive side of genetic engineering has been to breed out some of the undesirable features of plants.